‘I lost weight eating Indian Takeaways’: Yorkshire couple lose six stone by swapping cakes for curries

Soneeta Bondhi had been working alongside her husband Gav in parcel factories on zero hour contracts when they discovered they’d need IVF to conceive.

“With us both on £9 per hour, I couldn’t wait so long to be able to afford IVF. It was impacting my mental health.

“My stubbornness was not going to allow me to drop it, so I did what I did best. I started baking as a side hustle, small things for family members and friends initially.

“We had already paid for a honeymoon to Jamaica before we discovered we would need to pay for IVF.

“It had taken two years to pay it and I knew it would cost probably triple what we paid for that holiday to even have a chance of starting IVF. It was such a sad time, so dark for us.

“We tried to cancel the holiday we saved for and get our money back, letting them know what awful situation we had found ourselves in and the holiday operator wasn’t having any of it.”

Soneeta started doing little fairs and markets taking her homemade goodies around Yorkshire and ‘peddling’ them as best she could.

She made a range of jams, caramels, and even a range of Christmas cakes and soft filled chocolates.

She added: “I combined my love of motorbikes and baking and The Baking Biker was born.”

Soneeta and her husband still longed for a child and she ended up off her day job with depression.

She said: “During my sick time the only thing that stopped me spinning into a deeper depression was baking and making beautiful creations to delight my customers.

“I'd always been the type of person that applied myself 100 per cent and I'd decided that I was going to put having a baby on the top of my priorities list.

“The Baking Biker grew and picked up momentum. People liked my stuff and they were talking about it. Shortly before going on Honeymoon that winter I lost my job.

“I set out on our Honeymoon, riddled with anxiety and depression, through a bleak winter with no planned future in front of me.

“It was a beautiful bittersweet two weeks, drenched in Caribbean sun and doused in rum cocktails.”

When the couple returned they put their last hopes on opening The Baking Biker inside Trinity Kitchen in Leeds City Centre.

Soneeta: “First we had to get an awful childfree Christmas out of the way, then to get ready for Trinity.

“We didn’t have much so we decided to get a bit of finance for the bit of kitchen equipment - ironically we used IKEA. It was satisfying to know IKEA was inadvertently helping us on our way.

“So we took our flat pack and set off on our Trinity stint picking bits of shelving out of skips and reclaiming bits of our stand. It was awesome.“We grew and grew and grew. We came out of Trinity with momentum and by this time I had roped my husband into the business.

“Trinity had made him a master baker and his confidence grew at the same rate as our business.”

With IVF and mortgage bills looming the couple realised they would have to sell a lot of brownies for two pounds to afford everything.

Sonneta said: “We once again swivelled to night markets, food festivals and fairs but to compete we needed to up our offering.